Rights-based lawyering in post-authoritarian democracies like Nigeria often builds on the foundations of legal activism developed under past authoritarian regimes, highlighting the continuity of legal resistance across political transitions.
Lawyers play a crucial role in upholding judicial independence, as shown in Pakistan’s 2007 movement, where their collective action helped restore a removed chief justice and reinforced the judiciary’s power against executive overreach.
The article argues that lawyers have a professional responsibility to understand and support democracy, not because it is perfect, but because their role is essential to improving and sustaining it.
Pro-democracy advocates consisted of both international organizations and local activists, including lawyers, journalists, and politicians, who worked to challenge authoritarian regimes and promote democratic values.
This article argues that lawyers can be key agents of democratic backsliding, using legal tools to erode institutions and legitimize autocracy, and calls for reforms to strengthen the profession’s role in defending democracy.
In backsliding democracies where autocrats manipulate legal systems to entrench power, attorneys play a crucial dual role as defenders of constitutionalism and civic educators, documenting abuses, challenging authoritarian legal reforms, and empowering the public to recognize and resist the legalistic tools of autocracy.
In February 2011, Chinese authorities detained numerous online activists and rights lawyers to suppress potential Arab Spring. This inspired unrest, using harsh interrogation and intimidation tactics, which later sparked public debate and legal critique over China’s criminal procedure laws.
An examination of both the relationship between the ideological and legal bases for the socialist practice of law in Cuba and the actual practice of law in one bufete colectivo.
An examination of legal power in the lens that authoritarianism is all over.
Democratic lawyers believe-as much of the rest of U.S. society and the bar do not-that ordinary people, acting collectively with peers, receptive professionals, and other allies, can and must play a leading role in efforts to reshape our society and political